Suppose a couple knows that if they conceive a child, the child’s life on the whole will contain a million units of pleasure and a hundred units of pain. Call this the Lucky Couple. If the Lucky Couple decides to conceive, will their act of conceiving harm the resulting child? Most people would say no. To harm a person is to make things worse for that person than they would otherwise be. If the Lucky Couple conceives a child, the child will experience a great balance of pleasure over pain. If the Lucky Couple does not conceive a child, the child will not exist at all, and thus will not experience any pleasure or any pain. It is not worse to experience a great balance of pleasure over pain than not to experience any pleasure or any pain. And so, most people will con- clude, if the Lucky Couple decides to conceive, their act of conceiving will not harm the resulting child.
David Benatar is not like most people. In his provocative and elegantly argued 2006 book Better Never to Have Been, Benatar defends the claim that acts of conception that take place in circumstances like those in my case of the Lucky Couple harm the child who is created.1 More generally, he argues that the creation of any sentient crea- ture whose life contains at least some pain or suffering is bad for that creature overall and thus harms it. Since, in the world as it is, every sentient creature does experience at least some amount of pain or suffering during its existence, it follows that in the world as it is, each act of creating sentient life harms the creature created by the act. This is a highly counterintuitive thesis and it has implications about the wrongness of conception, the rightness of early abortion and the goodness of extinction that are, if anything, even more counterintuitive. But while Benatar’s fundamental claim is diffi- cult to believe, it arises from an admirably simple and ingenious argument whose pre- mises are not only plausible, but difficult to deny. In Part I of this paper, I will explain Benatar’s argument. In Part II, I will develop an objection to it. In Part III, I will de- fend the objection from two arguments that might be made in response to it. I will con- clude that Benatar’s argument, although surprisingly forceful, is ultimately unsuccess- ful.
I.
Benatar’s argument is based on the claim that there is an important asymmetry be- tween pleasure and pain. This claim, in turn, is grounded in the intuitive response he expects most people to have to four different kinds of cases. I will introduce the prin- ciple underlying Benatar’s argument by locating it in the context of one kind of case in
particular and will postpone treatment of the other three cases that Benatar appeals to until after I have raised an objection to his argument. So let us begin by considering what I will call the Blessed Couple and the Cursed Couple. The Blessed Couple knows that if they conceive a child, the child’s life on the whole will contain a million units of pleasure and zero units of pain. The Cursed Couple knows that if they conceive a child, the child’s life on the whole will contain zero units of pleasure and a million units of pain. What does morality say about the choice that each couple faces?
It is difficult to resist the thought that there is an important moral asymmetry be- tween the two cases. This is because it is difficult to resist the thought that while it would be wrong for the Cursed Couple to conceive the Cursed Child that they could conceive, it would not be wrong for the Blessed Couple not to conceive the Blessed Child that they could conceive. That is certainly my own intuitive reaction to the two cases, and I expect that most people will respond to them in the same way. If your in- tuitive response to the two cases is instead to view them as morally on a par, or if you believe that a consequentialist moral theory that treats them as morally on a par trumps whatever asymmetric intuitions you might otherwise have to the contrary, then the problem posed by Benatar’s argument will be unable to get a grip on you. But if, like most people, you are strongly inclined to say that it would be wrong for the Cursed Couple to conceive the Cursed Child but not wrong for the Blessed Couple not to con- ceive the Blessed Child, then boy does Benatar have an argument for you. I will as- sume for the purposes of this paper, then, that it would be wrong for the Cursed Cou- ple to conceive but not wrong for the Blessed Couple not to conceive.
If there really is such an evaluative difference between the Blessed Couple and the Cursed Couple, there must be some general principle that accounts for it. Benatar’s ar- gumentative strategy is to identify the general principle that he thinks best accounts for the difference and then to show that this principle entails that we are mistaken about the case of the Lucky Couple. In order to preserve our beliefs about the Blessed Cou- ple and the Cursed Couple, that is, we will have to concede that the Lucky Couple does, in fact, harm the child it conceives, even though the child’s life on the whole will contain a million units of pleasure and only a hundred units of pain.
Benatar presents the general principle he appeals to as a set of four claims:2
(1) the presence of pain is bad
(2) the presence of pleasure is good
(3) the absence of pain is good, even if that good is not enjoyed by anyone
(4) the absence of pleasure is not bad unless there is somebody for whom this ab- sence is a deprivation
A few clarifications are in order before we turn to the question of why we should ac- cept this set of claims and what, if anything, it implies about the case of the Lucky Couple.
I take it that (1) and (2) are straightforward and uncontroversial. They assert that pain in itself is a bad thing and that pleasure in itself is a good thing. It should be clear, moreover, in what sense they are to be taken to be bad in itself and good in itself: they are bad or good for someone, namely the person who experiences them. But (3) and (4), and the asymmetry between them, require a bit more attention. Let me begin with (4). The claim that the absence of pleasure is not bad unless there is somebody for
whom this absence is a deprivation suggests (although it does not strictly entail)3 that the absence of pleasure is, in fact, bad, when it is the deprivation of pleasure for a par- ticular person. This may sound as if Benatar means to say that the absence of pleasure in such a case is bad in itself, in the way that the presence of pain is bad in itself, but several pages later he clarifies that “when I say that [the absent pleasure that is a depri- vation of a particular person] is bad, I do not mean that it is bad in the same way that the presence of pain is bad. What is meant is that the absent pleasure is relatively (rather than intrinsically) bad. In other words, it is worse than the presence of plea- sure.”4 This suggests that we can restate (4) as follows:
(4) the absence of pleasure is worse than the presence of pleasure only if there is somebody for whom this absence is a deprivation.
which in turn suggests that we can restate (3) as follows5:
(3) the absence of pain is better than the presence of pain even if there is nobody for whom the absence of pain is a benefit.
And this, in turn, raises a question about (3).
Unlike (1) and (2), which make claims about something’s being good or bad
simpliciter, (3) and (4) make relational claims about one thing’s being better or worse than another. (4) makes a claim that one thing is worse than another only in the case where the same person exists in both scenarios that are being compared. It says, for example, that Larry existing without pleasure is worse than Larry existing with plea- sure. This claim raises no particular difficulty about what is meant by one thing’s be- ing worse than another. The former scenario is presumably worse than the latter be- cause it is worse for Larry. But (3) makes a claim about one thing’s being better than another not just in the kind of case where the same person exists in both scenarios be- ing compared, but also in the kind of case where the person exists in one scenario and doesn’t exist in the other. It maintains not only that Larry existing without pain is better than Larry existing in pain, but also that there being no pain because there is no Larry is better than Larry existing in pain. The former claim again raises no particular difficulty about what is meant since in that case Larry existing without pain is presum- ably better than Larry existing in pain because it is better for Larry. But the latter claim does raise a problem: how can Larry’s not existing at all be better for Larry than Larry’s existing in pain? For one condition to be better than another for Larry seems to require that both conditions be conditions of Larry, and it is a familiar point that non-existence is not a condition that characterizes Larry when Larry doesn’t exist. Saying that Larry is non-existent is just another way of saying that there is no Larry, and so no condition of Larry at all.
Benatar offers two responses to this problem,6 but I will focus here only on one. Fol- lowing Feinberg, Benatar points out that it seems perfectly intelligible to say of some existing person that he would be better off dead. This seems intelligible, on Benatar’s account, not because it means that if he dies he will then be in a condition that is better for him than his current condition, but because it simply means that from the point of
3 The absence of pleasure as a deprivation might be good, for example, if the person deserves to be de- prived of the pleasure. I will follow Benatar in ignoring such potential complications.
5 This is not to insist that Benatar would not also endorse the claim that that absence of pain is intrinsi-
cally good under such conditions, but for purposes of explicating and analyzing the argument, it will
prove to be simpler to render (3) and (4) parallel in this respect.
view of his own well-being, he should prefer not to exist at all rather than to exist in his current condition. When (3) maintains that the absence of pain is better than the presence of pain even if there is nobody for whom the absence of pain is a benefit, then, the relational claim can be understood in this sense. Just as it can make sense to say of a particular person that it is better for him that he no longer exist than that he continue to exist given that his existence involves a certain amount of pain, so it can make sense to say of a person who would otherwise have existed that it is better – and better for him — not to exist than to exist in a certain amount of pain.7 Of course, we can identify the already existing person in whose interest it is to cease existing while we cannot identify the particular person who would have existed and who would have been worse off for having existed. But, at least on Benatar’s account, “we can still say that whoever that person would have been, the avoidance of his or her pains is good when judged in terms of his or her potential interests. If there is any (obviously loose) sense in which the absent pain is good for the person who could have existed but does not exist, this is it.”8 With all of this in mind, then, we can restate Benatar’s set of claims more precisely as follows:
(1) the presence of pain is intrinsically bad
(2) the presence of pleasure is intrinsically good
(3) the absence of pain is better than the presence of pain if either (a) there is an ac- tual person whose interests are better served by the absence of the pain or (b) the presence of the pain would require the existence of a person who would not oth- erwise exist and whose potential interests are better served by the absence of the pain
(4) the absence of pleasure is worse than the presence of pleasure only if there is an actual person whose interests are better served by the presence of the pleasure.
Since the four claims together maintain that the presence of pleasure and pain are sym- metric with respect to intrinsic goodness and badness but that there is an asymmetry between the absence of pleasure and pain with respect to the relational properties of being better than and worse than, I will refer to the conjunction of these four claims as Benatar’s Relational Asymmetry Principle (RAP).
Why should we think that the Relational Asymmetry Principle is true? The answer, according to Benatar, is that accepting the principle provides the best way for us to make sense of our intuitions about cases like the Blessed Couple and the Cursed Cou- ple. If the Cursed Couple conceives, there will be a child existing in pain rather than no child at all. According to RAP (3b), the absence of pain is better than the presence of pain if the presence of the pain would require the existence of a person who would not otherwise exist and whose potential interests are better served by the absence of the pain. And so RAP implies that by conceiving the Cursed Child, the Cursed Couple would make things worse for that child. If the Blessed Couple decides not to conceive, there will be no child at all rather than a child existing with pleasure. According to RAP (4), the absence of pleasure is worse than the presence of pleasure only if there is an actual person whose interests are better served by the presence of the pleasure. Since if the Blessed Couple does not conceive there will be no such actual person, this means that if the Blessed Couple does not conceive the Blessed Child, they will not make things worse for that child. RAP, in short, seems to entail that what the Cursed
Couple does by conceiving makes things worse for the Cursed Child while what the Blessed Couple does by refraining from conceiving does not make things worse for the Blessed Child. And this, in turn, seems to provide a natural explanation for why it is wrong for the Cursed Couple to conceive but not wrong for the Blessed Couple not to conceive.
So far, so good. There seems to be a morally relevant difference between the Blessed Couple and the Cursed Couple. There also seems to be a problem about how to account for the difference. And Benatar’s Relational Asymmetry Principle provides a plausible solution to that problem. But things go from good to not so good once we apply RAP to the case of the Lucky Couple. If the Lucky Couple conceives a child, re- member, the child’s life on the whole will contain a million units of pleasure and a hundred units of pain. Intuitively, it seems that the child will not be harmed by being conceived in this case. But RAP seems to show that we are mistaken about this.
Following Benatar, we can think about what RAP would entail about the case of the Lucky Couple by considering the relevance of the pain that the child would suffer and the relevance of the pleasure that the child would enjoy independently. With respect to the hundred units of pain that the child will suffer if the Lucky Couple conceives, RAP entails that the child’s existing will be worse for the child than the child’s not existing. RAP (3b) maintains that the absence of pain is better than the presence of pain even if there is no actual person who is benefited by the absence of pain. So, with respect to the choice between existing and not existing, the hundred units of pain count against bringing the child into existence. Even though it is true that if the child is not con- ceived there will be no actual person who is benefited by the absence of the hundred of units of pain, RAP (3b) maintains that the absence of pain still makes it better for the child that he not exist than that he exist.
With respect to the million units of pleasure that the child will enjoy if the Lucky Couple conceives, however, the implications of RAP are crucially different. In particu- lar, the principle entails that in this respect, the child’s existing will not be better for him than the child’s not existing. RAP (4) maintains that the absence of pleasure is worse than the presence of pleasure only if there is an actual person whose interests are better served by the presence of the pleasure. But in the case of the Lucky Couple, the absence of the million units of pleasure would be the result of the absence of any child to be deprived of it. So, with respect to the choice between existing and not ex- isting, the million units of pleasure do not make it better for the child that he exist than that he not exist.
The result of combining these two considerations seems difficult to avoid, but just as difficult to accept. With respect to the hundred units of pain, non-existence is better for the child than existence. With respect to the million units of pleasure, existence is not better for the child than non-existence. So non-existence has one advantage over existence – it avoids the badness of the child’s suffering pain – but existence has no advantage over non-existence: the fact that the child would enjoy pleasure makes exis- tence no better for the child than non-existence because the absence of pleasure is not worse for the child than the presence of pleasure when there is no actual child to be deprived of the absent pleasure. If non-existence has an advantage over existence and existence has no advantage over non-existence, then non-existence is better than exis- tence. So non-existence is better for the child than existence in this case. If the Lucky Couple conceives, they will cause the worse thing to happen from the point of view of the interests of the child they would conceive. Relative to non-existence, he will not be
better off as a result of the million units of pleasure. But relative to non-existence, he will be worse off as a result of the hundred units of pain. So the Lucky Couple will make things worse for the child by conceiving him. The act of conceiving him will harm him. And since your life and my life contain at least some pain as well, you and I were harmed by being conceived, too. We would all have been better off never having been.
II.
Benatar’s argument for this unwelcome conclusion depends on his claim that his Rela- tional Asymmetry Principle provides the best explanation for the moral asymmetry be- tween cases like that of the Blessed Couple and the Cursed Couple. One way to object to Benatar’s argument, then, would be to identify an alternative principle that does an even better job of explaining the asymmetry and that produces a different result in the case of the Lucky Couple. And I want to argue that we can, in fact, identify such a principle if we start by appealing to a symmetric version of Benatar’s principle, one in which (1)-(3) are the same as in RAP but in which the claim made about the absence of pleasure in (4) is symmetric to the claim made by RAP (3) about the absence of pain. What I will call the Relational Symmetry Principle (RSP), then, amounts to taking RAP (1)-(3) and conjoining them with:
(4) the absence of pleasure is worse than the presence of pleasure if either (a) there is an actual person whose interests are better served by the presence of
the pleasure or (b) the absence of the pleasure would require the absence of a person who would otherwise exist and whose potential interests are better served by the pres- ence of the pleasure
If RAP (3) is logically coherent, then surely RSP (4) is logically coherent as well. If the absence of pain can be better than the presence of pain even when there is no ac- tual person who enjoys the absence of pain, that is, then the absence of pleasure can be worse than the presence of pleasure even when there is no actual person who is de- prived of the absent pleasure. Benatar himself concedes this much.9 My claim in the rest of this paper will be not only that RSP is as coherent as RAP, but that RSP can be used to undermine Benatar’s argument.
To see how this can be accomplished, let us begin by considering what my Rela- tional Symmetry Principle would entail about the case of the Cursed Couple and the Blessed Couple. If the Cursed Couple conceives, the resulting child’s life on the whole will contain zero units of pleasure and a million units of pain. RSP (3b) is identical to RAP (3b). It says that the absence of pain is better than the presence of pain if the presence of the pain would require the existence of a person who would not otherwise exist and whose potential interests are better served by the absence of the pain. And so RSP, just like RAP, makes it plausible to say that by conceiving, the Cursed Couple would make things worse for the Cursed Child. If the Blessed Couple conceives, on the other hand, the resulting child’s life on the whole will contain a million units of pleasure and zero units of pain. RAP (4) entailed that by not conceiving, the Blessed Couple would not make things worse for the Blessed Child. But RSP (4b) maintains that the absence of pleasure is worse than the presence of pleasure even if the absence of the pleasure would require the absence of a person who would otherwise exist and whose potential interests are better served by the presence of the pleasure. So my RSP,
unlike Benatar’s RAP, entails that the Blessed Couple would make things worse for the Blessed Child by not conceiving.
Does this mean that the Relational Symmetry Principle is unable to account for the asymmetry between the Blessed Couple and the Cursed Couple? It does not. The asymmetry between the Blessed Couple and the Cursed Couple can be accounted for by appealing to an asymmetry between pleasure and pain that is different from the asymmetry that Benatar appeals to and that is fully consistent with affirming the Rela- tional Symmetry Principle. The asymmetry is that with respect to pleasure, no actual person is made worse off by the decision about whether to conceive him regardless of whether the better or worse outcome is selected, but with respect to pain, whether an actual person is made worse off by the decision about whether to conceive him de- pends on whether the better or worse outcome is selected.
If the Blessed Couple decides to conceive the Blessed Child, for example, then things will be better from the point of view of the interests of the Blessed Child, and the Blessed Child will therefore not be made worse off by the decision. If the Blessed Couple decides not to conceive the Blessed Child, then things will be worse from the point of view of the interests of the Blessed Child, but the Blessed Child will not exist and so will not be an actual person who has been made worse off by the decision. Re- gardless of which choice the Blessed Couple makes, then, no actual person will be made worse off by their decision. But pain is different from pleasure in this respect. Whether an actual person will be made worse off by the Cursed Couple’s decision about whether to conceive depends on the choice they make. If the Cursed Couple de- cides not to conceive the Cursed Child, then things will be better from the point of view of the interests of the Cursed Child. No actual person will be made worse off by their decision both because there will be no actual person to be affected by their deci- sion and because their decision made things better rather than worse. But if the Cursed Couple decides to conceive the Cursed Child, then things will be worse from the point of view of the interests of the Cursed Child, and the Cursed Child will exist to be made worse off by this fact. There will therefore be an actual person who has been made worse off by their decision. While in the case of pleasure no actual person is made worse off regardless of whether the Blessed Couple choose the better or worse outcome, in the case of pain, whether or not an actual person will be made worse off depends on whether the Cursed Couple chooses the better or worse outcome.
Because of this asymmetry between pleasure and pain, the Relational Symmetry Principle that I am proposing as an alternative to Benatar’s Relational Asymmetry Principle can account for the claim that it would be wrong for the Cursed Couple to conceive the Cursed Child but not wrong for the Blessed Couple not to conceive the Blessed Child. The Relational Symmetry Principle can do this by appealing to what I will call the Actual Persons Principle (APP), where by an “actual person” I mean a person who exists at some point in time:
APP: When choosing between two options, it is prima facie wrong to make the choice the acting on which will result in its being the case that there is an actual person for whom your act made things worse.
RSP entails that if the Cursed Couple conceives the Cursed Child, this will make things worse for the Cursed Child. Since the Cursed Child will exist, the Actual Per- sons Principle entails that this will make the Cursed Couple’s act prima face wrong. RSP also entails that if the Blessed Couple does not conceive the Blessed Child, this
will make things worse for the Blessed Child. But since if the Blessed Couple does not conceive the Blessed Child, the Blessed Child will never exist, and since the Actual Persons Principle focuses only on the harmful effects on people who actually exist at some point in time, the principle will not entail that the Blessed Couple’s act is prima facie wrong. Thus, while Benatar’s Relational Asymmetry Principle can account for the asymmetry between the Blessed Couple and the Cursed Couple, my Relational Symmetry Principle can account for it as well, provided that it is conjoined with the Actual Persons Principle.
Benatar’s RAP, as we saw in Part I, entails that the Lucky Couple harms the child that it conceives. What does my RSP entail about this case? If the Lucky Couple con- ceives, the resulting child’s life on the whole will contain a million units of pleasure and a hundred units of pain. As in the case of RAP, we can follow Benatar and see how the case looks from the point of view of RSP by considering the relevance of the pain that the child would suffer and of the pleasure that the child would enjoy inde- pendently. With respect to the hundred units of pain that the child will suffer if the Lucky Couple conceives, RSP entails that existing will be worse for the child than not existing. RSP (3b), just like RAP (3b), maintains that the absence of pain is better than the presence of pain if the presence of the pain would require the existence of a person who would not otherwise exist and whose potential interests are better served by the absence of the pain. So, with respect to the choice between existing and not existing, my RSP, just like Benatar’s RAP, treats the hundred units of pain as counting against bringing the child into existence.
With respect to the million units of pleasure that the child will enjoy if the Lucky Couple conceives, RAP (4) maintains that the absence of pleasure is worse than the presence of pleasure only if there is an actual person whose interests are better served by the presence of the pleasure. Since if the child is not conceived there will be no ac- tual person who is deprived by the absence of the million of units of pleasure, RAP maintains that the absence of pleasure does not make it worse for the child not to exist than to exist. But my RSP is crucially different from Benatar’s RAP in precisely this respect. RSP (3) is identical to RAP (3), but where RAP (4) maintains that the absence of pleasure is worse than the presence of pleasure only if there is an actual person who is harmed by the absence of pleasure, RSP (4b) maintains that the absence of pleasure is worse than the presence of pleasure even if there is no actual person who is harmed by the absence of the pleasure because the absence of the pleasure requires the ab- sence of the person who would otherwise exist with the pleasure. So RSP maintains that the absence of pleasure does make it worse for the child not to exist than to exist. With respect to the choice between existing and not existing, the million units of plea- sure count in favor of bringing the child into existence according to my RSP, while they do not count in favor of bringing the child into existence according to Benatar’s RAP.
Regarding the hundred units of pain, then, RSP maintains that existence is worse than non-existence, and regarding the million units of pleasure, RSP maintains that ex- istence is better than non-existence. Since the total amount of pleasure outweighs the total amount of pain in this case, the magnitude of the advantage that existence has over non-existence is greater than the magnitude of the advantage that non-existence has over existence. And so, in the end, RSP entails that in the case of the Lucky Cou- ple, the advantages of existence outweigh the advantages of non-existence. Benatar’s
Relational Asymmetry Principle entails that the Lucky Couple harms its child by con- ceiving it. But my Relational Symmetry Principle does not entail this.
We now have two principles that are capable of accounting for our asymmetric judgment in the case of the Blessed Couple and the Cursed Couple: Benatar’s Rela- tional Asymmetry Principle and my Relational Symmetry Principle. The question, then, is which principle provides the better account. There are three reasons to con- clude that my Relational Symmetry Principle does.
The first reason to favor my RSP over Benatar’s RAP is that RSP entails that the Lucky Couple does not harm its child by conceiving it while RAP entails that the Lucky Couple does harm its child by conceiving it. It may seem that I am begging the question here. It may seem that I am saying “we should believe that the Lucky Couple does not harm the child it conceives because RSP entails that it doesn’t, and we should believe RSP because RSP entails that the Lucky Couple does not harm the child it conceives.” That would, indeed, be circular. But that is not what I am saying. What I am saying is this: Benatar provides, as a reason for endorsing RAP, the claim that RAP accounts for the difference between the Blessed Couple and the Cursed Couple. Accepting the deeply counterintuitive claim that the Lucky Couple harms its child by conceiving it is simply the price we have to pay in order to preserve our judgments about the cases of the Blessed Couple and Cursed Couple. But RSP shows that we can account for the judgments in these two cases without paying that price. If, among two competing explanations for the judgments in the Blessed and Cursed Couple cases, one has fewer counterintuitive implications in additional cases than the other, then that is a legitimate, non-circular reason for preferring it. The case of the Lucky Couple therefore provides a legitimate, non-circular reason to prefer RSP over RAP. And once we have selected RSP over RAP for this legitimate, non-circular reason, there is no longer any reason to doubt the common sense judgment that the Lucky Couple does not harm its child by conceiving it.
A second reason to prefer my RSP over Benatar’s RAP is independent of RSP’s im- plications for the case of the Lucky Couple. Instead, it arises from the fact that while both RSP and RAP involve affirming the existence of an asymmetry between pleasure and pain, the asymmetry that RSP appeals to is perfectly straightforward while the asymmetry that RAP appeals to is quite counterintuitive. The asymmetry that my RSP appeals to arises directly from the fact that pleasure is good and pain is bad. Since pleasure is good, the worse outcome regarding pleasure is when it is absent. Since pain is bad, the worse outcome regarding pain is when it is present. There is nothing sur- prising or mysterious about this. In order for an actual person to be made worse off by something, he must actually exist at some point in time. There is nothing surprising or mysterious about this, either. But these two perfectly straightforward observations are enough to ground the asymmetry between pleasure and pain that my RSP appeals to in accounting for the asymmetry between the Blessed Couple and the Cursed Couple: since existing is the worse outcome in the case of Cursed Child, there is an actual per- son who is made worse off if the Cursed Couple makes the worse choice. Since not existing is the worse outcome in the case of the Blessed Child, there is no actual person who is made worse off if the Blessed Couple makes the worse choice.
But the asymmetric claim that Benatar’s RAP appeals to should seem quite surpris- ing. It seems odd to say that the absent pain of non-existence makes it better for the Cursed Child not to exist but that the absent pleasure of non-existence does not make
it worse for the Blessed Child not to exist. How can the absence of something have an effect on the would-be child’s welfare in one case but not in the other? Benatar, of course, provides a reason for accepting this asymmetry: the claim that accepting it is necessary in order to account for the asymmetry between our moral judgments in the case of the Blessed Couple and the Cursed Couple. But my RSP shows that Benatar’s RAP is not necessary in order to account for this feature of our moral judgments. Once we see this, we lose our reason to endorse the asymmetry that Benatar appeals to. And once we lose our reason to endorse the asymmetry that is appealed to by RAP, the fact that the asymmetry itself is intuitively less plausible than the asymmetry appealed to by RSP provides a second independent reason to prefer my RSP over Benatar’s RAP.
A final reason to prefer RSP over RAP is also independent of its implications for the case of the Lucky Couple. It arises from the fact that while both RSP and RAP can produce the intuitively correct answers in the case of the Blessed Couple and the Cursed Couple, there is an important difference between the two principles in terms of the additional assumptions that have to be accepted in order for them to be able to do so. Neither RSP nor RAP by themselves yield any conclusions about what it would be right or wrong to do. Neither principle makes any reference to right or wrong, obliga- tory or impermissible, should or should not. Instead, they make judgments about which states of affairs are good or bad, or better or worse. Without some sort of bridg- ing principle, therefore, neither can justify any conclusions about what should or should not be done. And this is what generates the third reason to prefer my RSP over Benatar’s RAP: the bridging principle needed in order for RSP to account for our judgments in the Blessed Couple and Cursed Couple cases is superior to the bridging principle needed in order for RAP to do so.
As I noted earlier, RSP can account for the asymmetry between the Blessed Couple and the Cursed Couple by appealing to what I called the Actual Persons Principle.
APP: When choosing between two options, it is prima facie wrong to make the choice the acting on which will result in its being the case that there is an actual person for whom your act made things worse.
In order to account for the asymmetry between the Blessed Couple and the Cursed Couple by appealing to RAP, however, we must instead depend on what I will call the Actual and Possible Persons Principle (APPP), where by a “possible person” I mean a person who will never exist, but who would have existed had the other option been selected:
APPP: When choosing between two options, it is prima facie wrong to make the choice the acting on which will result in its being the case that there is an actual or possible person for whom your act made things worse.
That Benatar’s argument requires us to assume the Actual and Possible Persons Princi- ple is clear from the following considerations. Benatar claims that we must say that the absent pleasures if the Blessed Child is not conceived do not make it worse for the child that he not be conceived. He claims that we must say that it is not worse for the Blessed Child that he not be conceived so that we can avoid having to say that it would be wrong for the Blessed Couple not to conceive the Blessed Child. But the claim “not conceiving the Blessed Child does not harm the child” is necessary to sus- taining the claim “not conceiving the Blessed Child is not morally wrong” only if it would be morally wrong for the Blessed Couple to harm the Blessed Child by not con-
ceiving him. The Actual Persons Principle does not entail that this would be wrong: even though not conceiving the Blessed Child would make things worse for the Blessed Child, not conceiving the Blessed Child would not be wrong because it would not result in an actual person for whom refraining from conceiving the Blessed Child had made things worse. Only if we include merely possible people in the scope of our considerations can Benatar’s argument for RAP succeed. And so Benatar’s argument requires us to accept the Actual and Possible Persons Principle.
But there are two reasons to prefer the bridging principle required by my RSP to the bridging principle required by Benatar’s RAP. The first is that the RSP bridging prin- ciple is simpler. The Actual Persons Principle posits only one kind of entity whose in- terests we must consider: people who at some point actually exist. The Actual and Possible Persons Principle includes this kind of entity plus a second and very different kind of entity: those people who do not exist and who will never exist but who would have existed had a different choice been made. All else being equal, a simpler princi- ple should be preferred to a more complex principle, and this provides one reason to prefer the bridging principle required by RSP to the bridging principle required by RAP.
The second reason to prefer the RSP bridging principle to the RAP bridging princi- ple is that the RSP bridging principle appeals to a consideration whose moral salience is less controversial. The fact that an act would harm an actual person is generally rec- ognized as relevant to the question of whether the act would be wrong. But the fact that an act would be worse for the interests of a merely possible person who will never exist if the act is performed is not already accepted to be relevant in the same way. In- deed, to say that we must consider the interests of people who will never exist is quite controversial. All else being equal, a principle whose salience is less controversial should be preferred to a principle whose salience is more controversial. And this pro- vides a second reason to prefer the bridging principle required by my RSP to the bridging principle required by Benatar’s RAP.
Benatar, of course, might maintain that all else is not equal, that RAP itself has a great amount of explanatory power because it can account for our asymmetric moral judgments in the case of the Blessed Couple and the Cursed Couple. But, as I have al- ready argued, RSP can account for these cases as well. If the bridging principle re- quired by RSP is simpler and less controversially salient than that required by RAP, and if RSP has at least as much explanatory power as RAP,10 then we have a third and final reason to prefer RSP to RAP. Combined with the fact that RAP implausibly en-
10 It might be suggested that in two important respects, Benatar’s RAP has more explanatory power than my RSP. This is because Benatar claims that the argument arising from his RAP solves Derek Parfit’s non-identity problem and mere addition paradox (2006: 178) and because there is no obvious route from my RSP to a solution to either puzzle. Limitations of space do not permit a detailed response to this suggestion, but the outline of my response would run as follows. Both puzzles arise when we are confronted with a two-option choice: the choice between conceiving a blind child or a non-identical and otherwise comparable sighted child, for example, in the case of the non-identity problem, and the choice between what Parfit calls A and B in the case of the mere addition paradox. In the case of the former puzzle, it is difficult to account for the intuitive judgment that making the first choice rather than the second choice would be morally wrong and in the case of the latter puzzle, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that B would be better than A, which in turn seems to entail what Parfit calls the Repugnant Conclusion: that what he calls Z would be even better still. Benatar’s argument for the claim that coming into existence is always a harm can help us to sidestep these two problems, but it cannot really help us to solve them.
tails that the Lucky Couple harms their child by conceiving it while RSP more plausi- ble entails that they do not, and with the fact that the asymmetry that RSP appeals to is more plausible than the asymmetry that RAP appeals to, we have three good reasons to prefer RSP over RAP. And by justifying the choice of RSP over RAP, we justify rejecting Benatar’s argument for the claim that the Lucky Couple harms their child by conceiving it.
III.
I have argued that we can justify rejecting Benatar’s argument by showing that RSP better accounts for our intuitions about the Blessed Couple and the Cursed Couple than does RAP and by showing that RSP entails that the Lucky Couple does not harm the child it conceives. I want now to consider two responses that might be offered on Benatar’s behalf. The first response arises from the fact that Benatar’s defense of RAP as a whole appeals to its ability to explain our asymmetric intuitions in four kinds of cases, not just the kind of case involved in the Blessed and Cursed Couples. Even if RSP proves superior to RAP in the context of the first kind of case, then, Benatar’s RAP might still prove superior overall. The second response arises from the fact that Benatar briefly responds to an objection that is in some respects similar to the one that I have developed here. One might then ask whether his response would apply to my objection as well.
Let us begin with the supplemental cases that Benatar appeals to in supporting RAP. The first such case is this: “Whereas it is strange (if not incoherent) to give as a reason for having a child that the child one has will thereby be benefitted, it is not strange to cite a potential child’s interests as a basis for avoiding bringing a child into exis-
The claim that it would be better to conceive no child at all than to conceive either a blind child or a different sighted child, for example, does not help to explain why it would be wrong to conceive the blind child rather than the sighted child if those were the only two options. The claim that the blind child would have less happiness to compensate for the harm of being brought into existence might be used to justify the claim that it would be wrong to conceive the blind child rather than the sighted child, but the claim that the blind child would have less happiness than the sighted child could just as easily be used to justify the claim that it would be wrong to conceive the blind child rather than the sighted child without appealing to the claim that either child would be harmed by being brought into existence. So while Benatar’s argument could establish that the right thing to do would be to not conceive at all, and while not conceiving at all would enable us to avoid choice situations in which the non-identity problem arises, his argument does not offer a solution to the problem, in cases where it does arise, that depends on our accepting the Relational Asymmetry Principle in particular.
Similarly, the claim that a world with zero people would be better than either Parfit’s world A or world B does not help us to resolve the paradox that is created by the fact that what Parfit calls A+ seems to be at least as good as A, that B seems to be better than A+, that this seems to show that B is better than A, and that this seems to show that Z is even better still. Indeed, the very same paradox can be generated without talking about worlds filled with people at all: A can represent the state of affairs in which you live for another 40 years at a very high level of welfare, B can represent the state of af- fairs in which you live for another 80 years at a level of welfare that is lower than in A but more than half as great, and Z can represent the state of affairs in which you live for an extremely long amount of time at a level of welfare that is just barely better than no welfare at all but such that the total amount of welfare your life as a whole will contain is greater than it will be in A or B. And so, again, Benatar’s argument could establish that the best world to choose in terms of population size would be one in which the puzzle about the relationship between A, B and Z would not arise, but it does not really offer a solution to the problem in cases where it does arise.
tence.”11 RAP accounts for this asymmetry by maintaining that bringing a happy child into existence does not really make the child better off whereas bringing an unhappy child into existence really does make the child worse off. But RSP can account for this asymmetry just as easily. It can explain why it is not strange to cite a potential child’s interests as a reason not to conceive, as in the case of the Cursed Couple. It can explain this because it maintains that creating an unhappy child causes harm to an actual person and because it is not strange to cite the negative impact on the interests of an actual person as a reason not to bring the child into existence. And it can also explain why it is strange to give as a reason for conceiving a happy child that the child will thereby be benefitted. The reason that this is strange is not that it is not true. Ac- cording to RSP, it is true that a happy child benefits from being brought into existence. And so it is true that the Blessed Couple would benefit its child by conceiving it. The reason it would be strange for the Blessed Couple to give this as a reason for conceiv- ing the Blessed Child is that, if they don’t bring him into existence, there won’t be any actual child whom they have failed to benefit. In cases where it clearly does make sense to cite as a reason for doing a particular action the fact that doing the action would benefit someone, it makes sense because there is an actual person who stands to benefit from the action being done and who will have to do without the benefit if the action is not done. But when the Blessed Couple is deciding whether or not to con- ceive, there is no actual person who stands to benefit from their deciding to conceive and no actual person who will have to do without a benefit if they decide not to con- ceive. And there is nothing about RSP that prevents us from appealing to this consideration in explaining our intuitions in the first supplemental case that Benatar appeals to.
Benatar’s second supplemental case involves reasons for regret rather than reasons for action.12 If we bring an unhappy person into existence, we can later regret this for the sake of the unhappy person himself. If we decline to bring a happy person into ex- istence, on the other hand, we may regret this for our own sake, but we cannot really regret it for the sake of the person we could have conceived. RAP is again able to ac- count for this asymmetry. We have harmed the unhappy person by creating him, and so regret for this for his sake is appropriate, but we have not harmed the potential but not actual happy person by not creating him, and so regret for his sake is not appropri- ate. As Benatar puts it, “The reason why we do not lament our failure to bring some- body [happy] into existence is because absent pleasures [unlike existing pains] are not bad.”13
But RSP can account for this asymmetry just as well, too. If the Cursed Couple con- ceives the Cursed Child, then RSP entails that they have made things worse for this child, just as RAP does. Since their child will be an actual person, there will therefore be an actual person they have harmed and thus an actual person for whose sake they can appropriately regret their action. If the Blessed Couple does not conceive the Blessed Child, then RSP, unlike RAP, does entail that they have made things worse for the Blessed Child. But since in that case the Blessed Child does not exist, there ex- ists no one for whose sake they can regret their decision. And so, as on the RAP ac- count, they can regret their choice for their own sake, but not for the sake of any actual
person that they have harmed. The case of asymmetric sources of regret then, like the case of asymmetric reasons for action, provides no reason to prefer RAP over RSP.14
Finally, Benatar appeals to an asymmetry between our response to distant places where people are suffering and our response to distant places that are uninhabited.15 When we learn of a distant place where people are suffering, we are sad for those peo- ple. But when we learn, say, of an uninhabited island, we are not sad for the people who, if they had existed, would have happily lived there. RAP is once more able to ac- count for this asymmetry: the suffering people are worse off because of their suffering but the non-existent people are not worse off because of their not existing. And so we are right to feel bad about the existing pains and not feel bad about the absent plea- sures. But RSP can once again account for the asymmetry, too. We feel bad for the suffering actual people not just because their suffering makes things worse for them but because their suffering is something bad that is actually happening to them. And while the non-existing happy people really would have benefitted from being brought into existence, according to RSP, it is nonetheless the case that nothing bad is happen- ing to them by their not having been brought into existence – indeed, nothing at all is happening to them since they don’t exist – and so their absent pleasures, while worse than existing pleasures, give us no reason to feel bad for them. There is simply no them for whom we can feel bad.
The result of considering all four cases that Benatar presents in defense of his argu- ment, then, is that we have three reasons to favor RSP over RAP — the reason arising from the case of the Lucky Couple, the reason arising from the more plausible asym- metry that RSP appeals to, and the reason arising from the more parsimonious and more salient bridging principle that RSP depends on — and no reason to favor RAP over RSP, since all the cases that RAP can account for can also be accounted for by RSP. The first kind of response to my objection to Benatar’s argument, then, should be rejected.
The second kind of response to my objection arises from something that Benatar says about the distinction between positive and negative duties. Immediately after ar- guing that RAP is supported by its ability to explain our intuitions in cases like the Blessed and Cursed Couples, Benatar notes that someone might propose an alternative explanation that does not involve the asymmetry between RAP (3) and RAP (4). Spe- cifically, he anticipates someone suggesting that the difference can be accounted for by appealing to the distinction between a negative duty not to cause harm and a posi- tive duty to actively “bring about happiness”. If we have a duty of the former sort but not of the latter sort, then this might explain why the Cursed Couple has a duty not to conceive while the Blessed Couple does not have a duty to conceive. And it could ex- plain this without appealing to the sort of asymmetry that Benatar’s principle involves. Benatar responds to this possibility as follows: “I agree that for those who deny that we have any positive duties, this would indeed be an alternative explanation to the one
14 It may also be worth noting that if the example of regret really does pose a problem for my RSP, then a parallel example poses the same problem for Benatar’s RAP. If the Cursed Couple does not conceive, then there is no one for whom they can feel pleased about their decision. If the fact that there is no one for whom the Blessed Couple can feel regret if they do not conceive means that conceiving the Blessed Child would not have made things better for him, then the fact that there is no one for whom the Cursed Couple can feel pleased if they do not conceive would mean that conceiving the Cursed Child would not have made things worse for him. But RAP and RSP both agree that conceiving the Cursed Child would make things worse for him.
I have provided. However, even of those who do think that we have positive duties only a few also think that amongst these is a duty to bring happy people into exis- tence.”16 Since virtually everyone who believes in positive duties will still deny that it would be wrong for the Blessed Couple not to conceive, that is, a response to Benatar’s argument that depends on denying the existence of such duties will prove unsatisfactory.
It may seem that this alternative account of why it is not wrong for the Blessed Cou- ple not to conceive is the same as the alternative explanation that I have provided in this paper, and that the objection that I have raised in this paper is therefore one that Benatar has already satisfactorily answered. But this is not so. It is true that the RSP-based response that I have endorsed maintains that the Blessed Couple’s child will be better off if they conceive it than if they don’t. And it is also true that the RSP-based response maintains that the Blessed Couple nonetheless has no moral obli- gation to conceive the child. It is therefore true that the objection to Benatar that I have defended here maintains that the Blessed Couple has no moral obligation to do the act that would be better for the child they would conceive.
But it does not follow from this that the RSP-based objection to Benatar’s argument depends on the claim that we have no positive moral duties. The RSP-based account is compatible with the claim that we have a great many positive duties, provided only that they are positive duties that we have to other actual people, people with actual lives that will go worse for them in various ways if we refrain benefitting them. If there is a child drowning in front of you, or an injured motorist lying by the side of the road, or a person starving in some distant country, for example, the RSP-based objec- tion to Benatar’s argument can allow that it would be morally wrong for you not to provide assistance. Indeed, even in cases where your assistance would simply make al- ready happy people even happier, the RSP-based objection to Benatar’s argument is consistent with the claim that it would be morally wrong for you not to provide it. If an already very happy child is about to enjoy a delicious ice cream sundae, for exam- ple, and if it would taste even better if you were to let him have one of your extra cher- ries to put on top of it, then the RSP-based account could allow that it would be mor- ally wrong for you not to donate the extra cherry you happen to have to the child.
The RSP-based account can allow that you would have positive duties in any or all of these cases because in these cases there is an actual person whose life will go less well if you do not benefit them. If the Blessed Couple declines to con- ceive, by contrast, there will be no actual person whose life will go less well as a result. And so the claim made by the RSP-based account that I have offered here, the claim that it is not immoral for the Blessed Couple to refrain from conceiving since doing so does not result in there being an actual person who is made worse off as a result, is consistent with (but does not require us to accept) the claim that we have a prima facie positive duty to benefit actual people and not just a negative duty not to harm them. It is not the fact that the Blessed Couple would (merely) benefit the Blessed Child by conceiving it that renders it morally acceptable for them not to conceive the child on this account. It is the fact that if they don’t conceive the child, there will be no actual person whose life will go less well as a result: no actual person that they have harmed and no actual person that they have failed to benefit.
Those who believe that we have positive duties to help others, then, can consistently embrace my objection to Benatar’s argument, as, of course, can those who deny that we have such duties. And since my objection to Benatar’s argument enables us to avoid the highly counterintuitive implications of his thesis, it isn’t simply that they can accept my objection. They should.17